Formal Meets Feral in “A New Leaf” (Elaine May, 1971) – Part 1

Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini—in short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what “capital” actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as soon finds that he’s run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life—unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and, for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically-sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she’s friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless: the perfect mark… But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers, that competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Wes & Erin discuss the 1971 film “A New Leaf,” written and directed by Elaine May. Thanks to our sponsor, the incredible online language school Lingoda. Go to https://try.lingoda.com/Subtext and use code SUBTEXT to save 20 EUR (or equivalent in your currency) when signing up. Upcoming Episodes: “Whoso List to Hunt” and “They Flee From Me” (Thomas Wyatt), “Beetlejuice,” Conrad Aiken (“Senlin” Section 2 of II. His Futile Preoccupations). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Henry Graham belongs to the most exclusive clubs, dines regularly at the most lavish restaurants, drives a Ferrari, employs a butler, and owns something called a Montrazini. In short, he capitalizes fully on his inheritance, despite having little understanding of what capital actually is. The very ignorance of practicality that his wealth affords turns out to be his undoing, as he soon finds that he's run out of money and must bid goodbye to the high life. Unless, that is, he can find a single, wealthy, isolated woman to marry and. And for the sake of preserving his refined, hermetically sealed existence, murder. Enter Henrietta Lowell. Similarly stunted by her own inheritance, she's friendless, awkward, and utterly helpless. The perfect mark. But Henry soon discovers that protecting his own interests also means protecting hers. That competence can grow out of the exigency incompetence creates, and that practicing love for someone turns out to be just as good as actually loving them. Today we're discussing the 1971 film A New Leaf, written and directed by Elaine May. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. 1:39 Wes: And this is Wes Alwan. 1:40 Erin: And you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, what if I told you that A New Leaf was not the first movie written by Elaine May that we have covered on this podcast? 1:52 Wes: Really? Wow. That's crazy. 1:55 Erin: Now I'm putting written in quotes, but could you guess? 1:59 Wes: Nichols was her partner, right? Did she have a role in the Graduate? 2:03 Erin: No, I don't think so. Though I think her shadow looms over that film with a character named Elaine and various other things going on there. Various psychosexual mind games perhaps happening between Nichols and May. I'm just joking. 2:17 Wes: I know we didn't do Ishtar. 2:19 Erin: We didn't do Ishtar. Not yet. Not yet, but you're on the right track. It's Tootsie. As I think I've mentioned before, you know, I'm a huge Elaine May fan, so this recording is like a dream come true for me. But, you know, I'd known for a long time that she was an uncredited script doctor on several classics, including Tootsie. But I never really knew the extent of her contributions to that script until I read the recent biography of her that came out this year, Miss May Does Not Exist by Carrie Courogen, which gives a complete picture of what exactly her edits entailed. And it turns out that she's, she's basically responsible for most everything that's great about that film. I mean, she didn't just punch up dialogue here and there, she kind of overhauled it. I mean, she was single handedly responsible for the Bill Murray character in the film. She added all the poignancy to Teri Garr's character. But she was the type of person who never wanted credit and was always trying to keep her name off movies like the one that we're covering today. Sadly, as a result of this, little is known about the extent of her contributions to a lot of films. And yeah, so I don't know if we can quite say, I mean, it's pretty extensive, extensively covered in the biography, but I think it seems to be as much her film as whoever was credited as the screenwriter. 3:31 Wes: Who's the credit? Do you remember who's credited? 3:33 Erin: Murray Schisgal. I guess she didn't want to upstage him or be, you know, not be a good fellow writer by taking credit for something that she helped out with. 3:41 Wes: But yeah, the great Murray Schisgal. 3:44 Erin: Yes, of Schisgal and Ebert. 3:47 Wes: Schisgal and Ebert, yeah. Why was she so reticent about putting her name on movie scripts? 3:52 Erin: As a script doctor? I think she didn't want to steal credit also probably because, you know, she, she doesn't seem to be someone who wants to be very well known. Like she would not be happy that we're doing a podcast episode on a new leaf, a movie which she has, you know, basically disowned. 4:06 Wes: She disowned it? How? And well, how did she do that? 4:09 Erin: Well, so a lot of stories about making of her films is really crazy. So basically what happened was she had a three hour edit of this film. You might have noticed that there's, especially in the last third of the film, there is some strange ed choices made. Basically she had a three hour cut of this film that included I think two, maybe three murders that the Walter Matthau character actually carries out. So he actually is a murderer. And it was, it was like three hours long and she was editing it and the studio got so frustrated with her that they took the film away from her, edited it themselves and she ended up suing them. They took it to court and not since, I guess since Justice Stewart's verdict about Louis Malle's The Lovers from 1958 was the law so famously brought in to assess a film. So they played the Paramount. I think Paramount Studios is the one. Anyway, the studio played their edit that they had done and the judge was like, this is hilarious. You lose Elaine May. And so she was upset that she didn't get to do what she wanted with the film, and she basically wanted her name taken off of it, but. But it was too late at that point. But there's the element of her, I think, not getting to do what she wants to do with the films. Like, she always ends up having some studio wrestle it out of her hands or having not as much control as she would like. And then maybe there's just this idea that if something doesn't go well, you don't get blamed for it or, you know, you get to disavow it a little bit or. It seems to me like she just really cares about the work and she doesn't care about getting credit for things. 5:42 Wes: So her cut doesn't exist. It's gone. 5:45 Erin: It's. Sadly, it looks like it's gone. I'm still, like, crossing my fingers that someday it's going to turn up. But the conventional wisdom is that it's lost. But this is one of the mythic. Along with the film that Orson Welles lost on the train in South America. This is one of the great mysteries of what happened to this. Where did it go? And it might be just. Even if they find it, it might be deteriorated somewhere. I don't know if they're going to find it in some sort of properly stored place after all these years. 6:12 Wes: But what do you think of this cut? I thought it was. I thought it was pretty good. 6:16 Erin: I mean, this is one of my top 10 favorite films, so I'm a fan. 6:20 Wes: I think an hour and 42 minutes is the perfect length for a comedy. 6:23 Erin: I think so, too. 6:25 Wes: Although they're often shorter. Even shorter these days. 6:27 Erin: That's right. That's right. You know, I mean, it's an amazing. I mean, you can tell that it's been chopped up a little bit strangely in the last third. I think it explains some of the strange choices that are made with his sort of fantasy sequences where that crazy music plays. 6:45 Wes: Right. That does seem to come out of nowhere. Yeah. There's not much precedent for it. Yeah. 6:50 Erin: But I mean, for a first film and for a situation in which she was not supposed to direct this film, I mean, she was kind of strong armed into directing it. She didn't want to be a Director. This was 69, I think when she had taken a story from, I think, called the Green Heart, I want to say from like an Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazine article, and adapted it into the screenplay. And she was just looking to sell the screenplay. And at the time, there was a big, you know, this was like right before peak era era where the studios were reckoning with the fact that they hadn't produced a new woman director since Ida Lupino. And they were trying to push to get more women directors on projects to kind of improve their image as an industry. So they told her that she could direct the screenplay herself if she wanted. And they also figured that this would be a great way of paying her less, because whatever they were going to pay her for the screenplay, she would also get the same amount of money for being a director or something like that. So they would save money and look better. And I guess they must have gotten the idea because Mike Nichols, her former comedy partner at this point, had already made who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the Graduate and was successful as a director. From what I understand, she was widely considered to be the great genius. Between the two of them, Nichols is just this incredible wunderkind who just like conquered all before him. And then Elaine May walked into his life and made him look like an idiot compared to her. So she was the one who was supposed to have the great career, and she was kind of floundering, and so she was selling the screenplay and they were just like, okay, you have to direct it. And then she got Matthau and they wanted Carol Channing to play the Henrietta character. And Elaine May said, no, this is really the man's movie. The woman has to just disappear into her role. The whole focus has to be on the Matthau character. So Carol Channing would be wrong for it. They said, okay, then your only other choice is you can play it. So she was strong armed into directing, strong armed into starring in it, I think all ultimately for the bundle of the one fee that they had originally offered her or something. And so I guess she showed up on set and was like, barely knew what the camera was and just started directing this thing. And it went. They doubled the budget and went way, way over time filming. But in the end, it made money back and then some. I think it was a big hit. It was popular. Yeah, Got great reviews and people really enjoyed it. And Matthau was big box office draw at the time, so it did really well. But she was really unhappy because she didn't get to do what she wanted to do with it. 9:22 Wes: So it Got nominated for some Golden Globes, Best Picture, Best Actress, and also nominated for Best Adapted Comedy for the Writers Guild of America. 9:34 Erin: And I think Elaine May was the fourth woman ever to be a member of the Director's Guild. Just a crazy statistic. 9:42 Wes: Wow. So her other films are. Well, she directed the Heartbreak Kid. 9:47 Erin: Yeah. From a Neil Simon script. 9:49 Wes: Neil Simon. How is that? Is that any good? I love Charles. 9:52 Erin: That's fantastic. Yeah. It's definitely the best movie ever made off of a Neil Simon script. And it's very much a. With her kind of humor. So it's far less of a Neil Simon feel to it than most. I mean, it feels much more modern than some of the dated qualities of Neil Simon. She pretty much, like, eliminates whatever the downsides of a Simon's script tend to be. As much as I like him, it feels like the very first true cringe comedy. She's basically inventing cringe comedy. So it's a fascinating film for that reason. It's a great movie. 10:24 Wes: And then there is, of course, Ishtar. 10:26 Erin: Yes. 10:28 Wes: But apparently so just, you know, looking at Wikipedia. So she's writer and director for Ishtar, but she's got a co writing, uncredited co writer of Tootsie now. I see that. And Of Reds, which is really interesting. 10:41 Erin: Yeah. She was friends with Beatty. 10:42 Wes: Okay. 10:43 Erin: And Nichols used her on a lot of things. Like she did the Birdcage, which I don't know if you know. The Birdcage. That's another fantastic movie. Great script. Yeah. And then there's Mikey and Nicky, which was her third of her four films that she. That she directed. And that's another fantastic film. It's out with Criterion, and that stars Peter Falk and John Cassavetes, who were also big fans of hers and very supportive. And I guess John Cassavetes was always, like, trying to give her money so that she could do the project she wanted because everybody became a big fan of hers after A New Leaf. And that's just a fantastic, really dark film. She bats a thousand, basically. I mean, you know, listeners might be surprised to hear this, but I think more and more it's become part of the public conversation how falsely maligned Ishtar was when it came out, how, you know, the studios were planting negative stories about the reception of the film before it was even released. You know, Elaine May famously says that if any, if everybody who hated Ishtar had actually seen it, I would be a rich woman today. You know, so if you actually go and watch it, it's really funny. It's a really good movie. 11:46 Wes: Is it? I saw it in the theater as a kid. I can't remember how I felt about it, but my standards were lower. Is Ishtar the thing that led her? I mean, she didn't direct again after that, right? 11:58 Erin: Yeah, yeah, they basically tanked her. 12:00 Wes: Is that why is that? 12:01 Erin: Yeah, I mean, she. She didn't play ball with people. You know, she was always Heartbreak Kid was an exception. That seemed to be a movie that went pretty smoothly and was studio backed and was a big hit. And it was, you know, it was fine. Mikey and Nicky, there were problems with it going over and with her having crazy amounts of film that she had sh. Her like, you know, stealing footage and bringing it to her friend's garage to try and get the studios away from it. And, you know, so there were some issues there. And then Ishtar, yeah, it seems like that was really the final nail in the coffin. But I mean, there was a long break between Mikey and Nicky and Ishtar, so it was kind of like her last chance, I guess. I guess when you're a woman director, you get much fewer chances to screw up than if you're a man, unfortunately. And so she's not like most directors in that she doesn't really want to compromise. She doesn't really have great people skills or schmoozing skills. I think, like, she just is pretty uncompromising about her vision and that ends up causing her to run into problems. And people just don't trust her because, you know, they didn't trust her because of the fact that she, you know, for a lot of reasons. We could blame sexism in the industry for most of them, probably. Yeah. So she just ended up mostly writing plays and doing various other things. Like she could have been, you know, she acted in a bunch of things. I think she could have had a great career as an actress if she wanted to, but she kind of floated around and. And didn't do much, but she did a lot, but not, not much that was public facing. But luckily we have these four films and now she's 92. I was lucky to see her on Broadway in the Waverly Gallery, which she won Tony for best actress in that performance a few years ago. That was amazing experience to see her live. And she was just fantastic in the play. 13:48 Wes: Very cool. Yeah, you showed me some sketch comedy with her and Mike Nichols, which is really good. So listeners should find that on YouTube. It kind of shows here. There's a sketch like quality to some of the scenes and they're really funny. And that includes the first scene where the gag is that Walter Matthau's character, Henry. Henry Graham, seems to be in a hospital, but it turns out to be a garage. Eventually we figure out that it's a garage, and it's. He seems to be in hospital because I think the starting visual and audio is basically sounds. Looks like a heart monitor. And so, yeah, so we find out that actually it's his. His car is at stake. And then that the problem with his car is that there's carbon on the valves, which is what the mechanics tell him, to which he responds, yes, there always is. As if he's ignoring the fact that they're giving him a diagnosis and that means he should take better care of his car. And he's curious about why they would tell him something he already knows, which is, in a way, trying to tell us something about the complacency of rich people. But of course, at a thematic level, carbon on the valves is just as much. Right. Where. So it's not heart disease. Right. It's not arteries covered in plaque, but rather it's car valves covered in carbon. And it tells us just as much about him. So it works as a gag on the one hand, but it also works as a metaphor. 15:23 Erin: Yeah, exactly. Like he cares about. You know, you think he really cares about someone who's being hospitalized, but of course he cares about things, not people. Um. 15:31 Wes: Right. 15:32 Erin: And the fact that he, I guess, has a Ferrari in the city. I mean, I guess his. His friend that has a plane has the same problem, which is that they're. They're. They're conspicuously consuming things that don't actually fit their lifestyle very well. I mean, I suppose the reason why there's carbon on the valves is because it's a Ferrari and he's not. You know, he's not taking it up to the red line, as they say. So, you know, he can't really use a Ferrari the way it's meant to be used if all he's doing is puttering around the city or driving out to Long island or something like that. So there are things that he doesn't seem to understand about how even the objects that he loves more than people should be treated or should be kept up properly. And then we'll see very soon after this that he spends money but doesn't know how it works. And this seems to be part and parcel of that, that he has all this, you know, expensive taste and nice things, but he doesn't understand that he's actually Kind of destroying them in his inadequate use of them. 16:34 Wes: So the joke is that. Well, he has to take the car in two to three times a week. 16:38 Erin: Every time he takes it out, which 16:41 Wes: is basically every time he takes it 16:42 Erin: out, 16:45 Wes: and he's told not to drive it, ever drive it under 3000rpm in a forward gear, otherwise you get carbon on the valves. So he's got to be more active and he's chosen a car which requires more energy. It's a more energetic vehicle than his character. Right. His character is very slow and curmudgeonly wooden. It's an interesting character because he. Well, I can't say he's completely unlikable, but he's in danger of being a character that is simply too unlikable to be the main character. But really, it's. Walter Matthau is the kind of actor that can pull that off because there's some kind of charm that's poking through even under all those layers. 17:28 Erin: Yeah. It's an amazing thing that he manages to be in his scenes of courtship after he learns. I'm jumping ahead a bit, but after he learns that he needs to marry a wealthy woman. I don't know about you, but I just. I've never watched that sequence of his bad dating. Two bad dates that he goes on, or two women that he's sort of pseudo courting and not taken his side, even though one of the women is the great Renee Taylor. But, you know, somehow everything he finds really annoying about these women is exactly what we're meant to find really annoying about them. So, you know, you want to, like, see him succeed. You want to. I don't know. I just. I do. Like, I want him to get his money so that, you know, he can't possibly be poor. He doesn't have the constitution for it. So, you know, I have a vested interest in. Despite the fact that he's an awful character, I have an interest in seeing him get what he wants somehow. And his curmudgeonliness does seem apt at times. And he's not as bad as his uncle, so there's that. 18:27 Wes: Right. Yeah. Well, his uncle and the servants who turn out to be exploiting Henrietta, they are quite a good contrast for him because he's, at least in the beginning, exploiting her, trying to exploit her, or thinks that's what he's doing. He's going to exploit and then murder her. It's not the same sort of thing as the servants and the uncle, who have a much more perverse quality. And they kind of know what they're doing, they know how to do it. They're not as obtuse in many ways as he is. Right, so she's supposed to be the one who's kind of an idiot and socially obtuse and a mess and can't take care of herself and childlike in many ways, but of course, he actually shares that with her. They're both people who can't take care of himself. And the whole premise of the movie is he has not been able to handle his finances. He's just ignored it. He's lived on 200,000 a year when he should have been living on 90 or something like that. And so it depleted all of his capital. So in a sense, he's exploited himself, he's exploited his own capital base. He's killed a goose that lays the golden egg by killing off the thing that produces all the interest in his trust that could have sustained him. And that'll all get undone when his nominal, his exploitation of Henrietta involves learning how to do all these things that he had neglected, like taxes and the books and all of those things. So ironically, the whole project of exploiting another in the process of learning to do that, he learns how to actually take care of another person. So that's the interesting thing thematically, I think, about the movie, the way. The way this planned exploitation turns into him unwittingly transforming himself into someone who cares. 20:17 Erin: Yeah, that's exactly what I love about the film. But thinking through what we're talking about in terms of his relationship to wealth, you kind of can't blame him for his own ignorance. In a strange way, like what seems to Mark, maybe, you know, the uncle. This doesn't apply to the uncle. But what seems to Mark the hangers on of Henrietta is the fact that they're not upper class, but they're greedy and aspiring to that. And they seem to aspire to just like pure exploitation for its own sake. And in a strange kind of way, Henry's responsibility for his own, you know, stultified relationship to money is rather minimal. You know, he's obviously inherited this wealth. He comes from a wealthy family and this very inheritance, and the very fact that this is just the air that he breathes means that he never had to learn how to deal with money. You know, it was just given to him. It wasn't like he had to learn how to save or learn how to spend properly. I mean, he's been warned, but he hasn't really paid attention. And interestingly too, his spending doesn't have to do with, you know, in a sense, the word that might apply to him is like a playboy because of his conspicuous consumption. But he's not a playboy in any other sense of the term. You know, he doesn't care about people. He doesn't care about using the wealth, it seems, for any nefarious means other than acquiring beautiful things and exercising his refinement of taste. And I think that actually positions him in a strange sort of way to be appreciative of Henrietta in a way that, you know, we could argue that the other characters in the film, other than Henrietta, who are all to a certain extent obsessed with money, aren't in a position to appreciate someone else. I mean, he has to learn how to love. He is a misanthrope. But I wonder if this desire just for beautiful things for their own sake and for a certain kind of, you know, his taste. His taste is indicative of someone who, though he's very twisted in on himself in certain ways, does have something in him that is appreciative, outwardly focused. 22:26 Wes: Yeah. I was thinking just before you. It's interesting, just before you used the word playboy, I was thinking of some of the parallels to the movie Arthur. And the operative word or concept at work in Arthur's family was ruthlessness. So you have a bunch of rich people, in a way, who know how to be rich. They know how it works. And then you have someone like Arthur who's just the childlike beneficiary of that, for better or for worse. On the one hand, it means a kind of immaturity, on the other hand, and some negative qualities that come with that. But on the other hand, it means not being inducted into that same habit of ruthlessness. Whereas Henry is a terrible person and doesn't care about people and is potentially a murderer and all these things, as you're pointing out, he has a certain kind of refinement. His butler at one point says, so this is at the point where Henry is just about given up. He's in despair because he's run out of money and he realizes he has no skills, he has no resources, no ambitions. All I am or was is rich. That's all I ever wanted to be. Just contemplating suicide. And the butler, I guess it's the butler is the only one who is the one who suggests marriage. It's the only way to acquire property without labor. It's pretty cool. I jotted down a note to myself. 23:51 Erin: I hadn't thought about that avenue, not just for women. Yeah, 23:56 Wes: right. So here's what the butler says, by way of encouragement. Well, first of all, he's talking about the fact that he would be out of a job. I mean, how many men these days require the services of a gentleman's gentleman? How many men have your devotion to form, sir? You have managed in your own lifetime, Mr. Graham, to keep alive traditions that were dead before you were born. Don't give up the fight, sir, just because the Philistines are upon thee. So that's a really funny. There's a lot of really funny bits of dialogue and gags in this. It's pretty consistently funny throughout. But it's interesting because this, you know, this pointing to the concept of form and tradition and Philistines. What it turns out Henry hates, what he says he hates in Henrietta is the fact that she's quote unquote regressed and she's quote unquote primitive. What other words does he use for her? 24:48 Erin: Feral. 24:49 Wes: Feral. There you go, that's the best one. She's not just primitive, she's feral. 24:53 Erin: She doesn't deserve to live. Forget I said, 25:00 Wes: yeah, she doesn't deserve to live. So his snobbiness, in a way, is a bit of his. It's his saving grace. He hasn't been able to take care of himself, but he's developed at least a little bit of refinement. And her helplessness, as his butler points out, eventually will arouse a sort of caretaking urge in him that maybe he's only directed towards objects thus far. And she gets him by the end of the very end of the movie. She gets him to at least contemplate the idea, for instance, of being a history professor, because he had studied history. So what gets the carbon off the valves, I guess, is finding someone. He thinks that he's going to exploit them because they're helpless. But in fact, her helplessness brings out. It gives some utility to his snobbery, which for the most part, has resulted in withdrawal. Right. He's completely terrified of being around people. There's that great scene with one of the women where she's taking her breasts out. We just find this. 26:01 Erin: No, don't let that happen. 26:02 Wes: After water. After her water skiing. And again, this kind of hits on the theme of the primitive, because during the water skiing, she says, I eat, I sleep, I swim, I dry off. It's also simple, perhaps primitive. And it satisfies me. And he has kind of a look of horror on his face with all these candidates. He's not going to be able to do what he does with Henrietta because not Only are they primitive, but they're not as helpless as her. And their desire and their vitality is too strong. Right. She says, I need on the lawn at night. I need. I desire love. That is what a woman is born for. I love. I wish love. I am human. I am woman. Henry. So while he's getting eaten up by mosquitoes. And then, yes, the. No, don't let them out, the breasts. 26:52 Erin: This movie is endlessly quotable in my growing up. And one of the things we used to love to say is, I have found peace in Connecticut. This says at the back of the water ski. 27:05 Wes: Oh, right. That's awesome. I left that. Yeah, left that part out. That's awesome. 27:10 Erin: A few other things as well as. Harold. She's unscrewing my Montrazini. But, yeah. So many quotable lines in here. But, yeah, the scene that you pointed to with Harold talking about his devotion to forms and not giving up the fight just because the Philistines are upon me. This is where, I mean, for the most part, I really deeply identify on a cellular level with Henrietta. But this is the moment where I'm like, oh, I'm a little bit Henry, too. Keeping a lot of things in Project before you were born. But no, but I like the reference to the Philistines because one would think that maybe he's a little bit of a Philistine because he's devoted to outward appearance. But he also. He's a true believer. I mean, he's an aspiring murderer, but he's also sort of not morally compromised in a way. He just truly loves being rich. And he has no pretensions other than pretension itself. And that devotion to form. Yeah. Means that he can appreciate something in Henrietta which, you know, which maybe we'll get to. I mean, you know, it does have to do with her helplessness and stuff like that. But he's poised to properly appreciate things. Not people things, but he has the capacity for appreciation on a certain level. And that, I think, really is the key to his reluctant transformation. But, I mean, I think this is. You're gonna. You're gonna laugh at me, but I think this is one of the most romantic, if not the most romantic movie I know of. And there are a coup reasons why that's absolutely crazy. I mean, first of all, it's a dark comedy about a murder. And also, you know, it's kind of a deeply unsexy movie. I mean, we can talk about. This is, I guess, part of the Renee Taylor scene where she's, like, throwing herself at him. And she has too much. I like your description of her excessive vitality. But you know, Henry and Henrietta make, you know, they make like June and Ward Cleaver look like a couple of sex maniacs or something. I mean there's a wedding night scene that's played for gags and there's a minor reference to sleeping in the same bed. But sexual motivations don't play any role in this relationship at all. I mean it seems like actually kind of asexual. 29:18 Wes: Yeah. 29:19 Erin: And yet I find this movie so romantic. Maybe. Maybe for the fact that it's so pure or something. 29:26 Wes: Yeah. I mean she's so childlike in her mentality that there's something almost repellent about the idea of her being sexual. The one hint of that is that we get is after the marriage when they're on their honeymoon in a cabin and he's sitting muttering to himself aloud. Basically his to do list for poisoning her, spreading an emulsifying agent. Soap gelatin, deflocculating agents get poison from gardening while she's standing right there. So this is their wedding night. And she comes out, I think she's brushing her hair. She's in a nightgown which turns out to conceal another nightgown underneath. 30:13 Erin: No, it's just a lining. Oh yes. Oh no, she has a. Yes, she does have tied at her throat a little bit of like a cover up. Yeah. And there's the Grecian. 30:24 Wes: Well, she takes off one nightgown and then it turns out she's got this other thing where she's got her head through the armhole. Greece. She calls it a Grecian style nightgown. 30:34 Erin: Yeah, it is. 30:35 Wes: And so he ends up having to help her out of that. And she's very awkward and so. Yes. So the Potentially. Right. And they're. They're about to have dinner together and there's. There's champagne and there's the two separate beds sitting there. But a potentially romantic sexual moment becomes very awkward and it's very childlike. 30:57 Erin: Right. 30:57 Wes: Because he's trying to help her like a kid, you know, like a child who's put their head through the wrong armhole. He's essentially trying to undress her and dress her in a very non sexual way. And Yeah. I don't you. Whether or not, you know, it's not straightforwardly romantic but it becomes tender or it's at least unintentionally brings out a tenderness in himself of which he's not really aware until the very end of the movie. But. Right. He's just been planning to poison her one moment, and the next moment he's having to take care of her because she's so helpless and awkward that it brings out that urge in him to do them. 31:35 Erin: Yeah. Gosh, that is such a funny scene with a Grecian style nightgown and the setting of their little cabana in Jamaica or someplace in the Caribbean. It seems she finds a fern that seems to exist in that particular climate, you know, but with the style nightgown she's wearing and the fact that she has a hibiscus flower in her hair, you know, she's a sort of symbol of. She's a very inept wood nymph for, you know, she herself is the flower that he's trying to take the proverbial roundup to. Well, it's hard to say this without. Without wanting to go back on what I'm about to say, because she's not. It's not that she's a symbol of, like, fecundity or of anything having to do with a flowering in her. I mean, she does go through a flowering. 32:27 Wes: Well, she's a fern. So what does that mean, that she's a fern rather than a flower? Yeah. What is that? I mean, but that says something very important. 32:34 Erin: Yeah, right. Well, she's. I mean, she's a wallflower, but as a fern, you know, she's something that doesn't have. She's not flashy, she's not decorative. She has good lines. Henry believes that, you know, the fern that she discovers and names for him has. Has good lines for a fern. So she has a kind of structural integrity to her. She's a good person and a sweet person who's. For all of her flaws, I mean, she's very generous. I mean, she can't stand up for herself. That's part of her generosity. But she has an inherent sweetness and goodness that makes her a prime target for other people's manipulation and control fern reproductions. 33:13 Wes: The one thing I remember from high school biology is it's really weird, right? 33:16 Erin: Yeah. 33:16 Wes: It's not asexual. It's still sexual, but I think the spores that it releases, instead of the birds and the bees cross pollinating or something like that, it just produces these spores which have both male and female structures inside of them that can end up producing a new plant. So it's almost like asexual reproduction. It's almost hermaphroditic. It produces a spore that has the sperm and the eggs in it, and then one fertilizes the Other. Anyway, listeners can let us know if I'm completely wrong about that. 33:50 Erin: Right. It's similar to that kind of propagation. 33:54 Wes: I think so, yeah. And maybe it is something that's more primitive than the average plant. Although in general, of course, plants are quite primitive. Yeah. 34:02 Erin: But I think it's especially ancient and. 34:05 Wes: Yeah, yeah. She comes across as quite asexual herself and fragile. Like a, Like a fern. Unadorned, like a fern. 34:15 Erin: Shaggy, bad haircut. 34:16 Wes: Yeah, exactly. There you go. You were going to say something else there before I interrupted you. I just wanted to enter. Yeah, no, interpolate that. 34:25 Erin: No, that's good. That's good. Yeah, yeah. I think of the fern as like, you know, glasses, googly eyes, something like that. The moment that I'm thinking of as well, having to do with this tenderness towards her mixed with this strange, I won't say sexual, but romantic scenario is just after his proposal when she's been indulging and she has the, The. The Mogen David mustache because she's been drinking her Malaga coolers with some. 34:50 Wes: I had to look that up. So it's called Mogan David's Heavy extra heavy Malaga wine. And then I looked that up and then I saw that there's MD 20/20. Right. So I remember Mad Dog 20/20 from college. Is that the same thing? Mogen David 20/20 or is that. 35:05 Erin: Yeah, this is. It's. It's hard to find the, the extra heavy Malaga wine I've had. I've made this cocktail before or as close as I could get to it, and it is absolutely disgusting. 35:16 Wes: Is it just like. Because in college, right. MD 20/20 was the thing that you. The disgusting thing you drink to get drunk. 35:22 Erin: Oh, really quickly. 35:24 Wes: Yeah. We'd like go out and get MD 20/20. I think it's the same maker. I think it's Mogen David md. 35:30 Erin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like any. 35:32 Wes: It's a different. 35:33 Erin: I mean, like, you know, we would have Manischewitz or something in the house. Like that's, you know, but it's the same. 35:39 Wes: So high alcohol wine. Is that what it is? I mean, anyway, I, I think that's what it is. College students. She says her college students. No, I mean with the Mogen David. 35:48 Erin: Yeah. 35:49 Wes: Or MD 20/20. Like her college students. She says introduce her to this drink. It's basically like a. Or. Or correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought, okay, this is like a college student drank for getting messed up. And he's particularly appalled and horrified by this. 36:03 Erin: Oh, I, I see it as More of like a. I mean, it's a wine cooler. So it's, it's inherently. I don't think it's a great way to get drunk, especially if you're watering it down with soda and lime juice. 36:13 Wes: It's just a super sweet philistine. Either. Either way. Okay. 36:16 Erin: It's like drinking cotton candy, you know, like he says, why don't you just. Why don't you just drink grape juice? And she says, well, grape juice isn't as sweet. Like. 36:24 Wes: That's Right, right, right. 36:26 Erin: This is a drink for people who don't drink, who don't like the taste of alcohol because it's bitter or something, you know, because they like never developed beyond a certain point when it came to like their taste buds, you know, like, like when you hit a certain age and you're supposed to finally like things that are, you know, dark chocolate, whatever. So this is like a little kid sugar rush kind of cocktail. 36:48 Wes: I see. 36:49 Erin: So she has her, her mustache from drinking it because she asked him first, do you have any straws? But he doesn't, so. 36:55 Wes: Straws? 36:57 Erin: No, no straw. 36:58 Wes: No straws. 37:00 Erin: So she has her Mogen David mustache. And after he's proposed to her on broken glass, he stands up and he wipes her mouth and he says, you're a good girl. It's really, actually really incredibly sweet. Maybe that's screwed up, but it's a really sweet way. You're good. You're a good girl. And when he's done wiping off her mouth, he kisses her. And so it's this bizarre blend of, you know, he's just proposed to this woman and also treated her like she's his five year old daughter. You know, it's bizarre but sweet. I don't know. 37:37 Wes: There's another scene like that where he takes something out of her hair, something like cotton that's gotten. And that's. I think that's around the point where he's firing her servants. 37:46 Erin: Yeah, that's a sweet moment when he's, when he's checking her for tags. When he cuts the tags off her sleeves and he lifts up her arms like he's. Yeah, it's like putting a coat on a little girl or something. 37:57 Wes: Yeah. 37:57 Erin: And then my favorite thing when they're camping in the Adirondacks at the end of the film and she spilled honey all over herself so her hands are sticky and she does that little kid thing of like going, going like this and spreading out her fingers because she's sticky and she doesn't know what to do with herself. And he takes her hand and, like, puts it in the water. Takes the other, Puts it in the water and says he'll make the dinner. 38:21 Wes: Yeah. And we get something that is sort of simultaneously childlike and innocent, but evocative of sex, which, for all we know, they've never literally had in the movie. But the stickiness. And also it's honey, like birds and bees, which, of course, are not a factor in fern reproduction, but. 38:38 Erin: Right. And I think the way that she looks at him in that last scene of the film, there's something. There's a spark there for sure, that's a bit different from the rest of the film. Like, there's something that's progressed about the relationship. 38:49 Wes: Yeah. 38:50 Erin: At that point where you think. Not just because that's the resolution of the. Of the tension in the film. 38:55 Wes: Well, him. Him deciding not to murder her or let her die is a big progression. 39:01 Erin: Yes. Yes. 39:02 Wes: The relationship could have ended right there. Sorry. 39:04 Erin: When she's all. You know, when they're both soaking wet and he has to hold her for warmth. You know, the way that she looks up at him, there's a. There's a shift in something. There's something going on there. Finally. 39:16 Wes: Yes. He's like, well, I better hold you. My body should provide some warmth. And that very wooden. And then she says, I'll always be able to depend on you, won't I? And he says, I'm afraid so. Yeah, I know. 39:28 Erin: I realized. 39:30 Wes: And then I'm not going to teach history, probably. 39:34 Erin: And then he very quickly says that he will. 39:36 Wes: Yeah. 39:36 Erin: He says he wouldn't mind it very much. 39:38 Wes: Terribly. Not terribly, terribly much to do that. And importantly, it's not just about teaching history. Going to the university with her in the mornings, grading term papers, Spending all day with her. Her at night. Yeah. 39:51 Erin: He's. He's obsessed with her, you know? 39:54 Wes: Yes. 39:55 Erin: When Elaine May talked about reading this story that she decided to adapt, she said that she was reading it and she was going, oh, my God, this guy is going to kill this woman. And he doesn't even realize that he likes her so much. And that was what inspired her to write the screenplay. It is really sweet. It's like he goes from wanting to kill her to being like, all right, I guess I'll spend every waking moment of my day with you. That doesn't seem too bad. I guess I won't mind. The whole crux of the reason why he has to pull her out of the water is because he realized that he needs her next to him so that he could comment on things. He turned around to say, oh, look, it's the fern. And she wasn't there. 40:34 Wes: Right. 40:35 Erin: He's getting a lot out of this too. I mean, besides the money. 40:37 Wes: He's kind of forced to have something in common with her. Her act of saying, I'm gonna name this fern after you, and I'm gonna give you this token with the bit of fern inside it. Right. She could have given a locket with her picture in it, something like that. But this is about. This is as good. Right. Because it's a piece of fern lodged in glass that he can put around his neck. 41:02 Erin: Oh, I like that. 41:03 Wes: So it's her. It's still her, but it's not just a. And he's lost that. At the end of the movie, he notices he's lost that which concerns him. Even as he's letting her drown. It's his way of becoming aware that he doesn't want her to be gone and he doesn't want her to drown. But the other factor there is just this idea that it's also a stand in for a child. Something they've done together, even though he hasn't really done that with her. He went with her on the trip. Right. Is that where she discovered it? But in any case, their honeymoon. Their honeymoon, yeah. 41:37 Erin: But she says she never would have discovered it if it wasn't for him, him giving her confidence. So in a way it is. 41:44 Wes: Well, there you go. Okay. 41:45 Erin: And I think that's. I think that's right. 41:47 Wes: Yeah. So they have something in common. And maybe it's a, you know, metaphorically a child. And that's in general what he doesn't. He doesn't have with people. In a way, he has more in common with things, or at least that's where his, his interest lies. And he's surrounded by terrible rich people. But in that moment he can find out that he has something in common with someone that he wants to share with them. I guess it's like him wanting to. Well, you know, so suddenly he shares her interest in the. In the ferns. And then she ought to be. She ought to be there to share it with him. Yeah. So I'm gonna let you live so that we can enjoy ferns together. Anyway. 42:30 Erin: Yeah. And the fern has his name. Right. So that's another thing. It's her with his name. It's a child with his name. Yeah. And I think there's something to be said for the fact that he is shown on a horse at some point. And there's a funny scene at the beginning of the film where somebody's horse breaks down. There's a friend who has the car, 42:55 Wes: the plane, and then the horse, the 42:56 Erin: car, the plane, the horse, yeah. And then there's a friend who's interested in trees. And his orchard has crown gall and then it has sooty blotch. So his trees are breaking down. And Henry does, he does, he does pet the arm of his butler in a way that indicates that the butler is one of his many possessions. But he's not, with the exception of the butler, he's not really connected to living things at all. You know, his friends have the horses, the crown galled orchards, but Henry doesn't have anything that's alive except for the butler. But as he tells Henrietta, servants are not people. Somehow the movement from Ferrari to fern, from the thing with carbon on the valves to the little hand, like dendrite. Is that, is that the right word? The dendrite? That represents some sort of significant progression, I think, on his part to move to things that are actually alive and therefore things that can't be controlled as easily as. I mean, he can't really control the Ferrari either. But things that aren't mechanical, things that have their own will to the extent, I mean, it seems stupid to say about a plant, but you know what 44:06 Wes: I mean, are animated, have their own internal force animating them and are not as usable. That's end part one there. And listeners can subscribe. Do a paid subscription to listen to part two immediately. Or you can wait a week and then you'll be able to hear part two, I think in the next part. I want to start by getting into going back to the concept of being a primitive or philistine and break that out, because I think there are different types of that. Right? Turns out she's not really that in the way that he thinks she is, but we'll get into that. 44:40 Erin: Okay, thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. 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